The Phené Philanderers Cricket Club

Our long-standing fixture against Shackleford, with its twisting, sloping track, old-style pavilion and tea and an opposition team liberally sprinkled with gap year talent from the local schools, looked in doubt on Friday, with only 6 players fully signed up. On consultation, the Shackleford skipper was keen to have some sort of match, so we agreed to continue and then, In the end, by some rare miraculous intervention, Simon Dean persuaded Alex to join him, Matt found a top opening batsman (Malcolm) on a cricket networking site and Siva found a stylish opening bat and medium pace bowler (Vignesh) during his Saturday game. So the Phené took the field with 9 sturdy men and a skipper (Giles) who was more than usually imperturbable and unpredictable.

We started the bowling attack unconventionally with spin down the hill from Simon and medium pace up the hill from Vignesh, mainly, one suspects, due to fitness rather than technical considerations. The Shackleford opening batsmen looked very stylish and timed their boundaries well, until a couple of wickets against the run of play put the opposition on the defensive. More bowling changes brought more canny spin into play. Matt picked up his usual early wickets and was removed from the attack, Jeremy warmed up with a few tight overs and was sent to cool off. Shackleford's run rate had slowed to a trickle. Things were looking up and our third change of bowlers, with the added symmetry of an Alex at each end, saw a demonic combination of pacey, full length swing from the bottom (A le Clercq) and solid determination from the top (A Dean). Alex le Clercq tore through their middle order with a very impressive spell of bowling - good pace, line and length and a bit of swing. Wickets started to fall quickly, with Alex raring for more blood, at which point our wise skipper restrained him in time-honoured Phené fashion by taking him off before he could complete his five-fer, that holy grail of the bowler's mission. Siva finished off the tail end and at tea, it looked as if we had an achievable target of 154.

We started well with the run chase, with Malcolm our new opener steadily accumulating by means of some fine pulls and cuts, Siva succumbing to a gloved leg side catch and Vignesh blunting their pace attack. Inevitably, Shackleford brought on some lively youngsters for some long spells to slow us down in the middle. Once our openers, including Matt, had gone and we needed to accelerate, Nick Swann then started an effective campaign of bowling high, looped, accurate leg breaks into and out of the setting sun from the bottom end. Scoring against this was only possible if you were wearing a welder's helmet, which we might bring next year. This difficult hurdle, with some accurate quicker bowling from the top end, eventually turned the tables to push the run rate out of reach. Our innings ended with some conservative batting by the lower middle order to ensure the draw rather than expose the last man, as we were only 9.

The spirit in the field was gentlemanly - as always at Shackleford - and the al fresco bar outside the pavilion after the game was a delight, with golden light, cans of lager, lots of cricket banter and enthusiastic discussion of future games.

JMcG

We won the toss and batted but were bowled out in only 18.1 overs, our 10 men mustering only 70 runs. Demijohns knocked off the runs in 7.4 overs for the loss of one wicket. Not our finest day.

We lost the subsequent 20-over match too, but at least we batted for 20 overs this time.